Why is it every time there is a budget crunch, states always want to gamble?
Real gamblers – the people who make a living at it – never try to “get well” by making a big score. That’s a sucker’s bet.
But more and more states seem to be betting on betting. Kentucky’s Steve Beshear wants to bring in casinos, which he insists will fill the state’s coffers to the tune of $500 million a year.
Maybe he’s counting on all those extra lottery tickets being bought by some of the up to 2,700 state workers whose jobs might be eliminated as part of the deficit fight. People who are out of work are just the kind of suckers the lottery goes after with its get-rich-quick ads.
Strickland also proposes limiting travel, new contracts and equipment purchases. But why does he insist on counting on something as chancy as lottery winnings to balance things out?
Kentucky faces a $600 million budget shortfall next year, according to its official revenue projections, but how bad are things really? Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear, just weeks into his term, says he’s been immersed in budgetary details nearly 24-7, and he’s telling everyone who will listen – and even those who won’t – that straits are dire indeed.
“It is a crisis situation,” Beshear said at a recent conference of Kentucky editorial writers in Frankfort. Revenues are projected to drop from their current level, he said, and with Medicaid and corrections costs rising, the squeeze will be on education and other programs. Then, in his budget speech Tuesday night, Beshear outlined exactly where he thinks the cuts should be made.
But legislative leaders, including some in his own party, aren’t painting the situation as quite so bleak. “I don’t think the budget situation is a crisis, but it is very difficult,” Senate Minority Leader Ed Worley, D-Richmond, told the journalists. “We just have to establish priorities.”
“This is the eighth governor I’ve worked with,” noted House Speaker Jody Richards, also a Democrat. “They all have one thing in common: They’re broke when they come in here. This one’s just broker than usual.”
Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, responded to Beshear’s assessment with his typically dry sarcasm. “I’m wearing a black tie today because the death watch is on here in Frankfort. It’s all doom and gloom.” Williams said that revenues are a bit ahead of last year’s, and that unused funds recouped from state agencies can help close the gap. “I am convinced that collectively we can put a good budget together.”
So which is it? Some believe Beshear is poor-mouthing the state’s finances so that Kentuckians will see a greater need to pass a casino gambling amendment. But a budget gap – whatever the exact figure – is real, and with pressing needs for increased funding in education and infrastructure (read: Brent Spence Bridge), the state needs real solutions.
One thing’s for sure: Kentucky’s budget-crafters can’t be counting their casino chickens before they hatch. The smart bet is to craft a lean, tight budget that doesn’t anticipate a short-term or long-term boost from gambling revenues. Expanded gambling “is not a panacea, it is another possible source of revenue,” Worley said. “But if the voters say no, we need to drop it and move on.”
Below: Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear talks about the state's budget at an editorial writers' conference in Frankfort.
I am probably the only one feeling this way, but I'm a little uncomfortable with all this talk about tax rebates. I admit upfront that for much of my life I have been more than happy to do my part to stimulate the U.S. economy. So it seems that the idea of a government "bonus check" would send me into a reverie about what to run out and buy.
I can't say I haven't thought about it -- if I qualify for a rebate, I'd probably apply it to a new garage door (how boring). But somehow I keep feeling that I'm being sucked into more quick-fix thinking about how we solve this country's long-term economic problems.
I've never believed my buying a lottery ticket is the way to shore up education funding. I don't think casinos will solve either Ohio's or Kentucky's financial woes. Each year I cut back a little more on holiday spending even as I read hand-wringing predictions from worried retailers.
Send me a check and I'm sure I can help it find its way back into the economy. But don't let me off the hook about saving, investing, managing my own family's finances well, keeping our health-care costs down as best we can and -- who knows? -- maybe even thinking like an entrepreneur one day. Passing on federal flow-through funds seems like the most passive thing I can do.
On Monday, President Bush will deliver his final State of the Union address before Congress under awkward circumstances: an unpopular president being labeled the “lamest of lame ducks,” finishing out his term as both parties focus elsewhere – on the campaign to choose his successor. It is a speech many observers say will be largely irrelevant.
But will it be? This State of the Union comes at a critical time, with the U.S. economy stalling, the home foreclosure crisis deepening and Congress hurrying to send Bush a $150 billion stimulus package. Americans’ perceptions and sense of confidence are key, and the president with his bully pulpit can affect the national mood. Keeping the nation from a recession could be a matter of psychology as well as monetary policy. What Bush says and how he says it will still matter – and could have an effect on the presidential race as well.
The Hill, a top Washington “insider” publication, reported Thursday that Bush’s speech will have four major themes: fixing the economy, renewing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, recent Iraq successes and trade agreements. He’ll emphasize areas of bipartisan agreement, it reported, trying to add achievements to his legacy.
But before Bush outlines his ideas on where the nation stands, we thought it would be helpful to present typical Americans’ assessments of how they see things from where they stand. So we’re inviting you to weigh in on this topic:
What is the state of your household? Do you believe you and your family are better off or worse off than you were at this time last year? What are the biggest problems and challenges you face? What policies do you think should be adopted to help you and your family prosper?
We invite you to add your comments to an online discussion board we’ve set up on this topic, or you can e-mail your thoughts to letters@enquirer.com. We’ll publish a selection of the responses we receive before Monday’s speech.
World economy: Still 'coupled' after all these years
Maybe we ought to feel good that the United States is still the big dog when it comes to the world’s economy, but somehow it’s not all that comforting. It certainly was distressing to the investors in India I saw interviewed on a cable news channel Monday as the markets there and in many other countries plunged in response to the U.S. decline. As they watched the ticker on a street in Mumbai, they seemed concerned but almost bemused at the same time. One man cracked a smile as he said he doubted he had enough left in his account to pay his broker.
Investors in India (and other nations) were taken by surprise. They had assumed their economies were becoming “decoupled” from ours, less tied to the ups and downs of the U.S. stock market. India especially had been taking this new “independence” as a point of pride, analysts said. But recent days have brought a rude awakening: As the U.S. goes, so goes the world. In particular, U.S. housing woes affect banks and investors in Europe and beyond – a recent Enquirer report, for example, noted that Germany’s Deutsche Bank is one of the top lenders involved in foreclosures here. If America goes into a full recession, everybody gets hurt.
But if other nations have an interest in seeing the American economy right itself, perhaps it follows that we ought to be more concerned about conditions abroad. We ought to pay a lot more attention to economic progress in other nations, and encourage policies that foster growth and prosperity.
A Psychology Today article on how young females have turned dieting into a competition makes a disturbing point about how much more young people are "tethered to each other" today than when many of us adults were growing up.
Simply put, young people spend an awful lot more time with each other than they do with any adults. Sure, when we were young, we'd hang out with our friends. But today's children go to after-school care together, are enrolled in organized activities together, get their own car as soon as they're able to drive and then are off with their friends, and skip family meals and outings to communicate with each other on Facebook, YouTube and MySpace.
The constant togetherness means young people are, for all practical purposes, raising each other. It's not just that what their peers think carries more weight than what Mom and Dad think. It's that many teenagers spend so little time with their families that they don't really know what Mom and Dad think.
Sure, it's possible to alter this trend, but it's not easy. Many parents spend long hours at work, hoping to save for college costs. Many teenagers spend long hours at sports, part-time job and other activities, hoping to get into college. And technology connects kids to a kid culture -- through TV shows and personal messaging options -- 24 hours a day.
Silly me, I thought the bottom-feeding operators who are trying to convince people to take out mortgages they can't afford might be laying low at this point.
So, I'm in the health club at Fort Mitchell the other day when someone's cell phone rings. I'm trying not to eavesdrop, but it's impossible not to hear the conversation. The gist is that my locker room colleague is suggesting to a potential home buyer that, hey, they could always look at getting an interest-only loan if they are having trouble with conventional financing.
Then I get a letter in the mail at my Hebron home from an outfit with a Florence address. It looks very official. "Secured document" it says. "To be opened by addressee only. Please respond within 5 days." It has the perforated sides you have to rip off to look at a paycheck or a tax statement.
It's a come-on to refinance my mortgage. Check these phrases out: Pick-A-Payment. More money. More programs. More freedom. Bankruptcy: OK. Late Payments: OK. Credit Problems: OK. Cash Out for Any Reason.
Why, I can refinance right now for 2.99%, though the double asterisks tell me that this is a "low negative equity payement." I can get an interest-only loan for 5.5 percent for 30 years, which means I could send them money for 30 years and have nothing to show for it.
I can't even begin to imagine what the fine print is like in a mortgage contract with these guys.
When will some people learn? If you are taking out a mortgage without a down payment or any equity, you're definitely buying more than you can afford. It is not my responsibility as a taxpayer to bail you out if you can't keep up the payments. And if you run a business such as one that sent me this mailing, you're a predator. I hope you're breaking a law, and I hope you get caught.
The biggest political joke of 2007 had to be all the straight-faced boasts we heard about how Congress had fixed the budget earmarking process – what we commonly and rightly call “pork.” The joke, however, was on us taxpayers. With some new terminology, sly accounting tricks and window dressing, much of the same old unaccountable, hidden spending continued at the whim of individual lawmakers from both parties. So it’s gratifying to see a vacancy on the pivotal House Appropriations Committee being turned into a sort of referendum on earmark reform. The GOP spot on the committee opened up Dec. 31 when Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., was appointed to the U.S. Senate to replace the now-retired Trent Lott.
A campaign has started to persuade Republican leaders to select Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., for the committee post. Like Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester, Flake doesn’t do earmarks – period – and has been outspoken about Congress’ spending excesses. How outspoken? GOP leaders ousted him from the Judiciary Committee in 2006 for revealing their dirty little earmarking secrets. That was before Republicans lost their congressional majority – largely, the exit polls revealed, over voter disgust with the corrpution this pork system fostered. Now, suddenly, Republicans want to be the party of fiscal responsibility again, so Flake and his supporters – notably former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and his FreedomWorks.org – argue that appointing him would be a good way not only to show they’re serious about reform, but to help make reform happen. Armey’s group is trying to get citizens to contact members of the GOP Steering Committee, which will make the decision.
“We all recognize that one of the major factors in the loss of our congressional majority was our failure to control spending,” Flake wrote in a letter to Boehner asking for the appointment. “There are currently 29 Republican slots on the Appropriations Committee. At present, all 29 Republicans participate to some degree or another in the earmarking process and are thus subject to logrolling. … Wouldn’t it make sense to have at least one Republican member of the Appropriations committee who doesn’t earmark?” Unfortunately, what makes sense doesn’t often prevail in Washington, so Flake’s bid seems to be a long shot. The smart money – quite literally – may be on Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who is the chief campaign fundraiser for congressional Republicans. You can see where this is headed.
Would it be too much to hope for at least one contrary voice in this process? As Armey puts it, “Three groups spend other people’s money: children, thieves and politicians. All three need parental supervision.”
The little village in eastern Hamilton County was founded on the notion that it could plan its residents’ lives from cradle to grave – an idea that has gradually given way to pressures and temptations from beyond the village green over the last few decades. One of its last attempts to hold off the outside world was a local zoning regulation restricting the posting of political signs to one per property, and none to be posted prior to 30 days before an election.
Resident Karen Koetzle filed suit in federal court last week, claiming that violated her free expression right to support candidates of her choice. Mariemont officials looked around and noted that while the Ohio Primary is not until March, the airwaves, news columns and Internet are pretty much full of campaign news, and have been for quite some time. They announced they will remove the restrictions which should settle the suit.
Look for campaign signs to begin crowding the lawns along Wooster Pike. It’s the American way.
The saga of amazing greed in the fen-phen case (click here for the latest story) could be subtitled, "Personal injury lawyers gone wild."
But sometimes you find circumstances that cry out for an ornery p.i. lawyer to administer some serious legal consequences.
At least that was my conclusion after reading today's Courier-Journal article on the release of new witness statements in the lawsuit against Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom near Louisville. Thirteen-year-old Kaitlyn Lassiter's feet were severed last summer after a cable snapped on the park's Superman Tower of Power ride. According to witnesses, the emergency stop button wasn't pushed in time to stop the ride before it dropped, and the broken cable started whipping around, severing her feet.
It turns out, if the depositions are accurate, that one of the ride operators was a 16-year-old girl who was being paid $5.15 an hour and had worked there for three weeks. She said she was too far away from the emergency stop button to react fast enough.
According to the C-J, "the Superman Tower of Power, formerly known as 'Hellevator,' lifted passengers 177 feet, then dropped them at speeds of more than 50 mph."
Beyond any maintenance or product defect issues, maybe it's not a good idea for the operators of such rides to be kids with three weeks on the job being paid at or near the minimum wage.
And I try to picture how I would feel if I were the ride operator, and that happened while I was on duty. Then I picture my daughter, who is almost 16, being put in that type of position and living with guilt the rest of her life. Not surprisingly, the young ride operator quit her job a few weeks later. Kaitlyn Lassiter isn't the only teenage victim of what went wrong on that ride that day.
If Bill Richardson’s hefty resume indicates he’s leaving the Democratic presidential race too soon (see “Bill who?” below), surely his colleague Dennis Kucinich’s candidacy has worn out its hanging chad-thin welcome. After winning less than 2 percent of the vote in New Hampshire this week, Kucinich called for a recount. That’s right. A recount – just to make sure that “100 percent of the voters had 100 percent of their votes counted.” How nice of him.
Cleveland’s former “boy mayor” seems to be alleging that dark forces favoring Hillary Clinton – maybe in some some weird, wacko triangulation scheme involving those right-wing voting-machine manufacturers, who knows? – conspired to steal the victory from Barack Obama. Kucinich’s “serious and credible” evidence? Reports on the Internet (it’s online, so it must be true, right?) claiming that hand-counted ballots favored Obama, while machine-counted ones favored Clinton.
Somehow, it’s not surprising that UFO believer Kucinich is also a card-carrying member of the tinfoil-hat brigade of election conspiracy theorists. But New Hampshire’s deputy secretary of state, David Scanlan, pointed out that the state’s voting machines aren’t linked, so any widespread manipulation of results is near-impossible, no matter how desperately the ballot-box paranoids wish to believe otherwise. And paper ballots – the Holy Grail of the electile dysfunction crowd – are there to back it up.
Whew. Another Ohio congressman (now living out of state) used to punctuate his floor speeches with the phrase, “Beam me up.” Kucinich probably doesn’t say that because he’s afraid he’d get his wish.
I was sad to see Bill Richardson drop out of the presidential sweepstakes. It’s not that I was a personal supporter – I’m not there with anybody yet. But the fizzle of his candidacy does make you wonder what the voters really are looking for.
We see Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama constantly poking at each other over who has the “experience” for the job.
Richardson’s resume includes a governorship, a stint in Congress, an ambassadorship, a cabinet post, personal relationships with foreign leaders and he’s bilingual. What other “experience” did he need to match the front-runners in his party? Yet mention his name to most people and you still get a “Bill who?” response.
I guess he just lacked the experience of being a star.
Two recent stories in Ohio suggest that nagging may become a health fad.
Getting nagged, not being a nag is the key. The idea is that developing healthy habits is easier if you are getting plenty of encouragement from those around you – the family and friends who have a vested interest in your good health. Here are a couple of examples worth following.
Story #1 – Pastor Keith Troy of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Columbus got tired of watching men in his congregation drop dead from preventable diseases. After four funerals in the same week last November he had all them stand up during a Sunday service and write down their names and phone numbers. He said he wanted every single one of them to promise to see a doctor within the next three months, and he planned to make follow up calls. If they couldn’t afford it, the church would pay for the appointment. If they needed transportation, someone from the church would drive them.
The church has a predominantly black congregation, and Troy knew that statistically, one out of three black men don’t see a physician regularly, and that black men have higher rates of hypertension and higher rates of fatal strokes than the rest of the population. Other churches have called to ask for pointers on doing similar things, he said.
Story #2 – Ohio State University researcher Prabu David is tracking 80 women for 12 weeks as they receive automatic calls on their cell phones reminding them to exercise. Half the participants will also get calls from fitness trainers with personalized tips. The idea is to find out if the electronic nagging will motivate older women to engage in regular exercise which might then lead to lower incidence of such illnesses as breast cancer.
If the nagging works for exercise, David said his team might try the system to help reduce smoking and bad eating habits.
Area school superintendents were meeting today to discuss the impact of budget cuts that Gov. Steve Beshear wants to make in school funding to deal with a looming budget crisis.
If I were a school superintendent, I'd be telling Beshear that if he really wants to help school districts and taxpayers, he can go to labor leaders and say the time to take one for the team -- the Kentucky team -- is now. Let's get rid of prevailing wage laws, or at least try some logical pilot projects as experiments. The savings on construction projects across the state would quickly move into multi-millions.
The cuts that Beshear wants and very well may need are potentially devastating to local school districts and our post-secondary institutions such as Northern Kentucky University and Gateway -- not to mention every thing else that state government funds.
No Republican can get this done. It will take a Democratic governor with crediblity with organized labor and a Democrat-controlled state House to move an issue that seems immovable.
Other states have successfully experimented with removing prevailing wage requirements from school construction projects. Savings of around 15 percent are predicted. Why not find out if that's true here?
And all anyone is talking about is paying market-rate wages, not minimum wages or artificially inflated ones. Every other standard of quality and performance remains the same.
When our editorial board recently interviewed Democrat Dan Wolff for the state House seat being vacated by Jon Draud, I was quite disappointed to find Wolff immovable on this subject. (Wolff lost Tuesday to Republican Alecia Webb-Edgington in a special election.) I just don't see how anyone can say they want to be good stewards of the public's money if they aren't willing to consider alternatives -- even sacred-cow subjects to Democrats such as prevailing wage.
Last week I suggested members of the Kentucky General Assembly, facing a $400 million budgetary hole, keep their focus on that little problem rather than stroke their egos or pander to single interest voters with a bunch of bills that grab headlines, clog the calendar and accomplish little.
Royce Adams, D-Dry Ridge, apparently had other ideas. According to a story by Pat Crowley posted online Tuesday in the Kentucky Enquirer, as the legislature prepared to open, Adams was drafting a bill at the request of a Grant County church to allow Kentucky students to openly pray in public schools.
His constituents would be better off if he would leave the praying alone and work on improving the students’ reading.
I have nothing against prayer. I have nothing against a student asking the Lord to help him or her get through the school day. And as long as students keep their prayers between themselves and God there isn’t anything in the law that prevents that from happening now. What I do think is a waste of legislative time is to try to incorporate prayer into the curriculum; to have teachers, administrators, students or anyone else worry about organizing the activity or trying to formally fit it into a school day. And I certainly wouldn’t want anybody connected to the government telling me or my children when and how to pray.
It is a particularly obstinate waste of taxpayer money to try to pass a law that will be challenged and then futilely defended at public expense before the courts correctly rule that the government, which cannot interfere with people’s religion, also has no business trying to organize it.
Here’s a name to remember – Chris Dole, local elected official and defender of the notion that democracy works best when the voters have real choices.
Dole is not a politician many people have heard of. He holds the office of Crosby Township Trustee. Crosby Township, for those of you who have never been there, is a mostly rural northeast of the village of Harrison in Northwest Hamilton County. Dole has held his office for two years. According to Enquirer records he was elected in 2005 with 359 votes, which made him the top vote getter in a five person race in which the top two candidates were elected.
Dole may not be a big political fish, but he believes in the system, which is why he was outraged last week to learn that Hamilton County’s Democratic and Republican bosses had connived to give each other’s candidates a pass in this year’s county commissioner races. Republican Chairman George Vincent agreed his party would not to endorse anyone against Democratic incumbent Todd Portune. Democratic Chairman Tim Burke agreed not to run anyone against Republican Greg Hartman, who is seeking a seat vacated by Pat DeWine. Ed Rothenberg, a Republican without his party’s endorsement, has field to run against Portune, but without the endorsement, his chances of success are remote. The Democrats get to hold onto their 2-1 board majority, with Portune and incumbent David Pepper. The Republicans get to keep their one seat, which Vincent apparently thought they were in danger of losing.
The real losers are the county’s citizens, who have no choice, will hear no debates about county issues and whose opinions clearly don’t matter diddly to the party bosses. That’s what Chris Dole thinks. I’m proud to agree with him.
A lot of people expressed their outrage at this deal on our online discussion board. Dole, a Democrat, went a step further. He took out petitions Tuesday to run as an independent candidate against Hartman in November. If he can get 2,875 valid signatures by March 3, his name will be on the ballot and people will have a choice. “I was flabbergasted when I heard about the deal,” Dole said. “I know Todd Portune is a popular guy… Greg Hartman is a lawyer and may be qualified, but why take away the peoples’ choice?”
Dole is an electrician, a member of Local 212 who works at Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. He knows that getting 2,875 signatures won’t be easy. That’s eight times as many people as voted for him in his previous run for office. It is also 22 more people than the entire population of Crosby Township. “But I think I have a chance if I can get into the union halls and get my message out,” he said. “Heck, I’ll stand on Fountain Square every day at noon if I have to.”
Like Rothenberg, Dole’s chances of success in November aren’t high. But that is beside the point. Without candidates willing to offer the voters choices, the public has no option but to accept the decrees of the party bosses.
Just a reminder – today is election day for the voters of Kentucky’s 63rd legislative district in Kenton County.
In a close call, the Enquirer endorsed Republican Alecia Webb-Edgington of Fort Wright over Democrat Dan Wolff of Fort Mitchell, to fill the vacated seat of Jon Draud. Draud resigned the seat to become the state’s education commisioner.
Whoever wins today’s special vote will hold the seat for the rest of the year. Voters will choose someone to fill a full term in the November election.
The district covers Fort Write, Fort Mitchell, Crestview Hills, Villa Hills, Crescent Springs, Lakeside Park and parts of Edgewood and Park Hills. Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Cynics will chortle at this posting -- and I'm usually one of them when it comes to politics -- but I was impressed with U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis' admission that, if he knew then what he knows now, he wouldn't have criticized Ken Lucas for sending so much taxpayer-funded mail to constituents.
The practice, called franking, came to light again when Davis showed up on a list of the Congress members using (or abusing) the practice the most. He reportedly sent more than 700,000 pieces out in 2006 at a cost of more than $165,000 to taxpayers.
This seemed more than a little hypocritical since Davis bashed Lucas, the former occupant of NKY's seat in Congress, in 2002 for the practice, only to spend a lot more.
In a follow-up story done by our Pat Crowley, Davis said this:
"We have a very big district and we were looking for effective ways to communicate. One of the ironies of this job is if you reconsider anything down the road, in politics you're considered a hypocrite. In business or journalism you're considered a thoughtful moderate."
Well, only Davis knows what's in his heart, but he has a point. We've all changed our minds about things as we've grown older and allegedly wiser. Even brilliant business leaders such as Bill Gates have made bad decisions. I guarantee you that Microsoft would have invented Google if it knew then what it knows now.
It's our job in journalism to be watchdogs and call leaders out when they say and do things in conflict with previous acts or comments. But, just as it's wrong to assume someone's motives are pure, it's wrong to assume that every change of heart makes someone a calculating hypocrite. Otherwise, we're holding our leaders hostage to all past acts and comments.
There isn't much of a constituency for homeless people. At the bottom rungs of society, they lack clout. The agencies that serve them rarely have a lot of support either. A large percentage of the homeless suffer from some form of mental illness. Sadly, a lot of them are military veterans. Estimates are rough but perhaps as many as 400,000 veterans are homeless in the U.S. on a given night. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans cites studies saying that one in three members of the homeless population was in the military at some time.
We like to pretend the homeless aren't around. Truth be told, few of us reading this would be very excited about having a homeless shelter in our neighborhood.
But, unless your heart is hardened beyond hope, it's difficult to read stories such as one we published on a frigid Thursday that said there is no emergency cold shelter in Northern Kentucky. If you're like me, you were complaining about feeling chilled going into the garage and getting into the car. Imagine having spent all night outdoors on Wednesday night.
Mari Kass, chairman of the Northern Kentucky Housing and Homeless Coalition, told reporter Peggy O'Farrell that advocates haven't been able to find a usable location for an emergency shelter to replace one that closed in March.
It shouldn't take a huge government grant and big bureaucracy to at least meet the immediate need. It takes a group of caring people to step forward and help this coalition locate a shelter and provide enough volunteers to help when temperatures drop. Yes, I'm sure it's easier said than done. It's easier to pretend the homeless don't exist -- except that they do. Who can really know for sure, but our story says the last count found nearly 800 homeless people in Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties.
Ohio may finally be finding a way to clog up the brain drain – at least the one that siphons off so many of the state’s best and brightest young teachers.
According to the Ohio Department of Education, using veteran teachers to mentor rookies has helped Ohio to sharply cut the number of new teachers who quit within the first five years. But according to the department’s latest report, only 28 percent of Ohio’s new teachers are now leaving the profession after five years, compared to 46 percent nationwide.
Support, advice even just a sympathetic ear can help prevent the previous rates of burnout. All districts in Ohio are now required to have mentoring programs for first-year teachers.
It seems like such an obvious solution, we wonder why it wasn’t thought of sooner. Other states contributing to that 46 percent national burnout/dropout average should take note.
The state of Kentucky faces another big budget crunch. There is the increasing inability of the federal government to adequately fund things (like the Brent Spence Bridge) or solve problems (like immigration and Social Security) that clearly should be primary obligations.
That suggests the pressure is on Northern Kentucky to do more for itself as a region, dealing with its own problems and exploiting its opportunities.
Some situations still get lost in parochialism or traditional thinking. Southgate, for example, desperately needs a new fire house. Voters rejected a $2 million tax increase to do it. Officials say that Southgate is just too far from Wilder, Newport or Fort Thomas to justify merger or consolidation talks for fire services.
Now, come on. The boundary lines of all these municipalities are about a mile from the Southgate facility, and the other fires stations are close. According to Google Maps, the Fort Thomas station is 1.8 miles from the Southgate station. Someone needs to call a meeting between officials of these four Campbell County communities to see if there's an opportunity here.
That's a small piece of the bigger puzzle.
Larger-scale example: The NKY Chamber (Disclosure: I'm on the board.) is taking a leadership role in seeking ways for the community to deal with skyrocketing health care costs. It's not just a health issue; it's an economic development issue, too. Imagine the power in the hands of a business recruiter representing a region that has a national reputation for helping employers control health costs, making community health a priority and having decent benefits for workers.
Maybe it's crazy to think that one region of one small state can do anything significant about the health-care mess. But, under the circumstances, it's crazier not to try.
That's also why the Vision 2015 plan for Northern Kentucky is so important. It provides a road map for a 10-year journey in which it is increasingly clear that Northern Kentucky won't be getting nearly as much help as local leaders want from the state and federal governments. Sooner rather than later, the Vision 2015 goals will need approaches and funding mechanisms that are less tied to government grants and earmarks.
Visionary, regional thinking with community leaders working together and presenting a united front has had a lot to do with Northern Kentucky's success. My New Year's resolution for NKY is for leaders to act on the knowledge that it's more important than ever.
